This handy book is a timeline guide to genealogical resources - what records are available and when they started - as well as an aide-memoire to significant historical events from 1066 to 2020; helping to put family ancestors into an historical context. Each page in this book has a main column with facts of genealogical relevance in the broadest sense; a side column makes mention of events of socio-cultural significance and events relating to the monarchy, the State and the Church. Entries cover historical and genealogical aspects of all four countries of the UK plus Ireland and the Channel Islands, as well as significant historical events in the wider world that had an impact here. The timeline is especially strong on the contribution of migration, extreme weather, disasters, epidemics, wars, non-conformist religions, taxation, transport, the armed services, famine, empire, organised labour, social writers, mapmakers, political unrest and scientific advances. Genealogically, there is information on changes to BMD certificates and the associated register entries, as well as to censuses and the facts they collected, plus much more. There are also references to earlier records that generated name indexes such as muster rolls and poll taxes, how complete they are and where they can be found. By being reasonably balanced across the centuries, the authors have resisted the temptation to include excessive detail on recent history. This book will help the family historian to construct a timeline for their ancestors, providing a fairly full set of historical events, developments and records likely to have had an impact on them, their family and community. It is a handy reference guide to a myriad of dates but is also a useful book to study when writing a family history as it offers plenty of contextual information. It should also prompt readers to search out new resources in tracing their ancestors.

Will keep you guessing till the last page! CARA HUNTER If you love Clare Mackintosh, Cara Hunter or Lisa Jewell, you will be utterly gripped by this dark, twisty police thriller - the first case for DS Kate Munro. * * * * * * * TWINS HAVE A SPECIAL BOND SOMEONE WILL KILL TO BREAK . . . As children, Gabi and Thea were like most identical twin sisters: inseparable. Now adults, Gabi is in a coma following a vicious attack and Thea claims that, until last week, the twins hadn't spoken in fifteen years. But what caused such a significant separation? And what brought them back together so suddenly? Digging into the case, DS Kate Munro is convinced the crime was personal. Now she must separate the truth from the lies and find the dangerous assailant - before any more blood is spilled . . . * * * * * * * PRAISE FOR THE DREAM WIFE I absolutely raced through it - ELLE CROFT Overturns every assumption you have at the beginning in a startling and clever twist - CARA HUNTER A clever tale where things aren't what they seem - DAILY MAIL

'Excellent . . . bursting with extraordinary women' - Anita Anand 'Brilliant' - Daisy Buchanan "My hope is that this book will inspire as I have been inspired. It's a love letter to the importance of history and about how, without knowing where we come from - truthfully and entirely - we cannot know who we are." Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries is a celebration of unheard and under-heard women's history. Within these pages you'll meet nearly 1000 women whose names deserve to be better known: from the Mothers of Invention and the trailblazing women at the Bar; warrior queens and pirate commanders; the women who dedicated their lives to the natural world or to medicine; those women of courage who resisted and fought for what they believed; to the unsung heroes of stage, screen and stadium. It is global, travelling the world and spanning all periods of time. It is also an intensely moving detective story of the author's own family history as Kate Mosse pieces together the forgotten life of her great-grandmother, Lily Watson, a famous and highly-successful novelist in her day who has all but disappeared from the record . . . Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries is accessible, ambitious in its scope and fascinating in its detail. A beautifully illustrated dictionary of women, it is a love letter to family history and a personal memoir about the nature of women's struggles to be heard and their achievements acknowledged. Joyous, celebratory and engaging, it is a book for everyone who has ever wondered how history is made.

The Boer War took place between 1899 and 1902, just 15 years before the start of the First World War. Some 180,00 Britons, mainly volunteers, travelled 6,000 miles to fight and die in boiling conditions on the veld and atop 'kopjes'. Of the over 20,000 who died more than half suffered enteric, an illness consequent on insanitary water. This book will act as an informative research guide for those seeking to discover and uncover the stories of the men who fought and the families they left behind. It will look in particular at the kind of support the men received if they were war injured and that offered to the families of the bereaved. Some pensions were available to regular soldiers and the Patriotic Fund, a charitable organisation , had been resurrected at the beginning of the conflict. However for those who did not fit these categories the Poor Law was the only support available at the time.The book will explore a variety of research materials such as: contemporary national and local newspapers; military records via websites and directly through regimental archives; census, electoral, marriage and death records; records at the National Archives including the Book of Wounds from the Boer War, the Transvaal Widows' Fund and others.

This title offers accessible and clear advice on discovering your family's history in the UK, explaining the best research techniques, how to log and collate your research. It contains all the information needed to start your own search including a useful checklist to guide through each stage. You can experience the amazing thrill of tracing back your bloodline hundreds of years and discovering who your ancestors were and what their lives were like. It contains over 135 illustrations, including diagrams, contemporaneous photographs, document facsimiles, sample family trees and artworks. It includes sections on Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Channel Island records, as well as English. This book introduces the subject of genealogy in a highly practical form, and explains the process of tracing and finding ancestors in the British Isles in a simple and easy-to-follow way. The book begins with the very basics of starting to research, guiding the reader through each stage, from finding clues in photographs and naming patterns, to creating drop-line charts and starting to draw up a family tree. The next section goes back to the early 1800s, and explains how to take investigations further by using all kinds of sources, both in archive form and on the internet, especially census information. The book also goes on to explain how to find relatives through their professions, apprenticeships, education, and military records. This useful guide to genealogy will help you discover your roots, identify your British ancestors, and unlock the secrets of your family heritage.

THIS HEARTBREAKING, HEARTWARMING, TRUE STORY FOLLOWING THE HISTORY OF A FAMILY IN WALES IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS EVER WRITTEN. 'I am a proud supporter of our National Health Service which has shown yet again what an important and valued institution it is in the UK. As the first NHS baby through to her work today, Aneira's story shows her dedication and passion for protecting this phenomenal service for future generations.' KEIR STARMER 'This book speaks from the heart about a passion to preserve our NHS - as powerful a symbol of goodness as we have. Nye's own experience and that of her family represents our deep need to fight for a society where all are equal in worth and value. And how the NHS stands fast as a symbol of equality, of fairness, and of compassion for all.' MICHAEL SHEEN 'Aneira has written a memoir which is a deeply personal, richly researched and incredibly timely tribute to Britain's commitment to provide free and equal healthcare to all.' - DAILY MAIL Book of the Week, 22 May 2020 'Moving tribute to the NHS.' - WI Life _____________________________________________________________ 'Edna,' says the doctor, coming to stand beside her bed. 'You need to wait. It's not long now. Don't push. Just hold on, Edna!' The birth of the National Health Service coincided with the birth of one little girl in South Wales: Aneira 'Nye' Thomas, the first baby delivered by the NHS. This is the touching story of Nye's family - their loves and losses - and the launch of a treasured public service that has touched the lives of every family in the nation.

Expertly contextualized by two leading historians in the field, this unique collection offers 13 accounts of individual experiences of World War II from across Europe. It sees contributors describe their recent ancestors' experiences ranging from a Royal Air Force pilot captured in Yugoslavia and a Spanish communist in the French resistance to two young Jewish girls caught in the siege of Leningrad. Contributors draw upon a variety of sources, such as contemporary diaries and letters, unpublished postwar memoirs, video footage as well as conversations in the family setting. These chapters attest to the enormous impact that war stories of family members had on subsequent generations. The story of a father who survived Nazi captivity became a lesson in resilience for a daughter with personal difficulties, whereas the story of a grandfather who served the Nazis became a burden that divided the family. At its heart, Family Histories of World War II concerns human experiences in supremely difficult times and their meaning for subsequent generations.

This book is a personal journey into the family archives of photographer Paul Weinberg. As a child his sorties into an old black trunk that the family had at home where he encountered stamps, letters, photographs and most importantly postcards, excited his imagination to a world far beyond the borders of South Africa and the African continent. They became a collection of connections to his grandparents, to their 'roots' in eastern Europe and his own. The book explores his past as he retraces his family footprints in South Africa. It takes him to far-flung small towns in the interior of South Africa where the family eventually found a niche for themselves in the hotel trade. In the form of postcards to his great grandfather, Edward, it is on one hand a visual narrative of this journey and on another a multi-layered travel book as he pieces the jigsaw of his family's footprints together. A sub-theme of the book is a story of the 'old hotel' which was at one point so central and dynamic in the lives of many of these small towns. Weinberg revisits these hotels and explores their whereabouts, and their evolution. Weaving history, historiographies, memoir and archive into a personal pilgrimage, this book offers fresh insights and perspectives on a family who made this country their 'adopted home'. Through the metaphor of the postcard this book sets up a dialogue between the author, his great grandfather, the past and the present, and asks important questions about who writes history, and who is left out.

"Giovanni Ruscitti has written a wonderful book of special relevance for all North and South Americans whose ancestors have migrated from Asia, Europe, and Africa. His journey to the land of his forefathers is so meaningful not only because of the discovery of what connects us 'Americanos' to the rest of the world but also the journey within. A trip in which we all feel recognized. Bravo maestro!" -Hernando de Soto, finalist for Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and author of Mystery of Capital Amazon #1 Bestseller Cobblestones, Conversations, and Corks is a passionate and deeply moving story about a father-son relationship; a culture rooted in family, food and wine; and an ancestral small town in Central Italy that was left behind after World War II. On November 11, 1943, the Nazis invaded Cansano, forcing its two thousand inhabitants to make a tough decision-fight and be killed or sent to a POW camp, stay behind as servants to the Nazis, or move into the unforgiving mountains of Abruzzo while the Nazis used their village as a home base. Giovanni Ruscitti's family chose the latter and spent the next few months living in horrendous winter conditions in the rugged mountains. When the war ended, they returned to a village so ravaged by the Nazis that, today, the town has less than two hundred citizens and remains in a dilapidated state. In this memoir, Ruscitti visits Cansano for the first time with his family, including parents Emiliano and Maria. As he walks Cansano's cobblestones, his father's stories and life are illuminated by the town piazza, the steep valley, and the surrounding mountains. He relives the tales of his parents' struggles during World War II, their extreme post-war misery and poverty, their budding romance after, and their decision to immigrate to the US in search of the American Dream. Ruscitti's adventure is not just an exploration of his homeland but reveals what family, culture, wisdom, and love really means. And what our heritage really tells us about who we are.

WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018 A SUNDAY TIMES PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR 2019 'A masterpiece of history and memoir' Evening Standard 'Superb. This is a necessary book - painful, harrowing, tragic, but also uplifting' The Times __________________________________________________ Little Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents in the Hague - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in the provinces during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why. His account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences - so crucial in defining us - can also be redefined. ___________________________________________________ 'Luminous, elegant, haunting - I read it straight through' Philippe Sands, author of East West Street 'Deeply moving. Writes with an almost Sebaldian simplicity and understatement' Guardian 'Sensational and gripping . . . shedding light on some of the most urgent issues of our time' Judges of the Costa Book of the Year 2018

'Captivating, intimate, dazzling epic and revelatory' SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE The story of the family who rose from the Frankfurt ghetto to become synonymous with wealth and power has been much mythologized. Yet half the Rothschilds, the women, remain virtually unknown. From the East End of London to the Eastern seaboard of the United States, from Spitalfields to Scottish castles, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the English branch of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty first. As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Determined to challenge and subvert expectations, they supported each other, building on the legacies of their mothers and aunts. They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform and trading on the stock exchange. Misfits and conformists, conservatives and idealists, performers and introverts, they mixed with Rossini and Mendelssohn, Disraeli, Gladstone and Chaim Weizmann, amphetamine-dealers, temperance campaigners, Queen Victoria, and Albert Einstein. They broke code, played a pioneering role in the environmental movement, scandalised the world of women's tennis by introducing the overarm serve and drag-raced with Miles Davies in Manhattan. Absorbing and compulsive THE WOMEN OF ROTHSCHILD gives voice to the complicated, privileged and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped history.

This fully revised second edition of Chris Paton's best-selling guide is essential reading if you want to make effective use of the internet in your family history research. Every day new records and resources are placed online and new methods of sharing research and communicating across cyberspace become available, and his handbook is the perfect introduction to them. He has checked and updated all the links and other sources, added new ones, written a new introduction and substantially expanded the social networking section. Never before has it been so easy to research family history using the internet, but he demonstrates that researchers need to take a cautious approach to the information they gain from it. They need to ask, where did the original material come from and has it been accurately reproduced, why was it put online, what has been left out and what is still to come? As he leads the researcher through the multitude of resources that are now accessible online, he helps to answer these questions. He shows what the internet can and cannot do, and he warns against the various traps researchers can fall into along the way.

Part One of this large format book will enable you to collect information for your family tree simply by talking to people, and provides a series of beautiful fill-in charts to permanently record a family tree of up to five generations. Part Two contains information on Irish family history and includes advice for those who want to proceed further with this fascinating hobby. The Ancestor Album is the ideal book for the beginner. If you don't want to do the family tree yourself give it to the kids and get them to do it.

In his haunting debut, Water and Sky, published in 2014, Neil Sentance explored the history of his family and the landscape which shaped them. Ridge and Furrow continues the project to chart in prose the voices of a seldom recorded people and place. From the long shadows of war and want, to facing the great changes to rural life in the twentieth century, to first forays into a world beyond the flatlands of Lincolnshire, the book delicately portrays the dreams of lone, and often lonely, figures in one family's history. Ridge and Furrow melds memoir and fiction, place and nature writing, told with characteristic lyricism and muddy realism.